Poetry

Question 0

Antithesis

Answer 0

A figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences or ideas, as in “ man proposes; God disposes.” Antithesis is a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness

Question 1

Allusion

Answer 1

A reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well known historical or literary event, person, or work

Question 2

Assonance

Answer 2

The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. “A land laid waste with all its young men slain” repeats the same “a” sound in laid, waste, and slain

Question 3

Blank verse

Answer 3

Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse is the meter of most of Shakespeare’s plays

Question 4

Cacophony

Answer 4

A harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones. It may be an unconscious flaw in the poet’s music, resulting in harshness of sound or difficulty of articulation, or it may be used consciously for effect, for example, “Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the Maw-crammed beast?”

Question 5

Couplet

• quatrain
• sestet
• octave

Answer 5

A two line stanza, usually with end rhymes.

• 4 lines
• 6 lines
• 8 lines

Question 6

Devices of sound

Answer 6

The techniques of utilizing sound of words especially in poetry. Include:
-Rhyme
-Alliteration
-Assonance
-Consonance
-Onomatopoeia
Used for many reasons, including to create a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, to imitate another sound, or to reflect a meaning

Question 7

Dramatic poem

Answer 7

A poem which employs a dramatic form or some element(s) of dramatic techniques as a means of achieving poetic ends. Example:
-dramatic monologue

Question 8

Elegy

Answer 8

A sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations upon death or another solemn theme

Question 9

Enjambment

Answer 9

The continuation if the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next rather than utilizing end-stopped lines.

Question 10

Extended metaphor

Answer 10

An implied analogy, or comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or entire poem

Question 11

Euphonium

Answer 11

A style in which combinations of words pleasant to the ear predominate. Opposite of cacophony. Example from John Keats’ Endymion:
-A thing of beauty is joy forever:
It’s loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness: but will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing

Question 12

Free verse

Answer 12

Unrhymed poetry which is not written in a traditional meter

Question 13

Hyperbole

Answer 13

A deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used for either serious or comic effect

Question 14

Imagery

Answer 14

The images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work. Imagery has several definitions, but it mainly refers to the visual, auditory, or tactile images evoked by the words of a literary work or the images that figurative language evokes

Question 15

Internal rhyme

Answer 15

Rhyme the occurs within a line, regathering than at the end. Example:

• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
• Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
• While I nodded nearly napping.. Suddenly there came a tapping….

Question 16

Inversion

Answer 16

A reversal if normal word order, often done to create a pattern or particular effect. (Yoda speak: happy I am)

Question 17

Lyric poem

Answer 17

Any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings. Love lyrics are common, but not exclusive.
-Sonnets and Odes are lyric poems

Question 18

Oxymoron

Answer 18

A form of paradox that combines contrary terms into a single expression. This combination usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness. Ex: wise fool, deafening silence

Question 19

Personification

Answer 19

Gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics

Question 20

Rhyme

Answer 20

Close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse. For a true rhyme scheme the vowels in the accented syllables must be preceded by different consonants, such as fan & ran

Question 21

Rhythm

Answer 21

The recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables The presence of rhythmic patterns lends both pleasure and heightened emotional response to the listener or reader

Question 22

Simile

Answer 22

A directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with “like” “than” or “as”. Easier to recognize than a metaphor, b/c the comparison is explicit. Ex: my love is like a fever

Question 23

Sonnet

Answer 23

Normally a 14 line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet is composed of an octave and sestet, And is rhymed ABBA, ABBA, CDE, CDE. The Shakespearean (or English) sonnet is composed of three quatrains and a couplet and is rhymed ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG

Question 24

Stanza

Answer 24

Usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme

Question 25

Symbol

Answer 25

Something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else. For example, winter, darkness, and cold are real things, but in literature they’re also likely to be used as symbols of death

Question 26

Synecdoche

Answer 26

A form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole. For example, We refer to “foot soldiers” for infantry, “Fieldhands” for manual laborers who work in agriculture, or the “head of state” for the ruler

Question 27

Syntax

Answer 27

The ordering of words into patterns or sentences. If the poet shifts words from the usual word order, you know you are dealing with an older style of poetry or a poet who wants to shift emphasis onto a particular word

Question 28

Theme

Answer 28

The main thought expressed by work. In poetry, it is the abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in person, action, and image in the work

Question 29

Tone

Answer 29

The manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; The intonation of the voice that expresses meaning. (Remember that the “voice” need not be that of the poet) Tone is described by adjectives, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Often a single adjective will be enough, and the tone may change from stanza to stanza or even line to line. Tony is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, imagery, irony, symbol, syntax, and style

Question 30

Understatement

Answer 30

The opposite of hyperbole. It is a kind of Irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is. For example, “there was a plane crash on 9/11” or “tis just a flesh wound” following a serious injury

Question 31

Poetic foot

Answer 31

A group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it. The most common type of feet are as follows:
• iambic u /
•trochaic / u
•anapestic u u /
•dactylic / u u
•pyrrhic u u
•spondaic / /
-Example By Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Trochee trips from long to short
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow spondee stalks; Strong ____________foot!yet ill be able
Ever to come up with Dactyl ____________trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long;
With a leap and a bound the swift ____________anapests throng.

Question 32

Scansion

Answer 32

A system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and type(s) of feet per line. Following are the most common types of meter:
•monometer---One foot per line
•dimeter-------2 feet per line
•trimeter-------3 feet per line
•tetrameter----4 feet per line
•pentameter---5 feet per line
•hexameter----6 feet per line
•heptameter---7 feet per line
•octameter-----8 feet per line
Using these terms, then, a line consisting of five iambic feet is called "iambic pentameter",  while a line consisting of four anapestic feet is called "anapestic tetrameter"
-In order to determine the meter of a poem, the lines are "scanned", or marked to indicate stressed and unstressed syllables which are then divided into feet.  The following line has been scanned and is iambic pentameter:
  u      /     u      /   
And  still she slept 
u    /   u      /     u    /
an az ure- lid ded sleep

Question 33

Irony

Answer 33

The contrast between actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning.
• Verbal irony is a figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning
Irony is likely to be confused with sarcasm, but it differs from sarcasm in that it is usually lighter, less harsh and its wording though in effect probably more cutting because of its indirectness. The ability to use and recognize Irone is a mark of intelligence and sophistication; sarcasm is intended to be mean. Devices by which irony is achieved are hyperbole an understatement

Question 34

Figurative language

Answer 34

Writing that uses figures of speech (As opposed to literal language or that which is actually specifically denoted) Such as metaphor, irony, and simile. Figurative language uses words to mean something other than their literal meaning. “The black that night has flown” is figurative, with the metaphor comparing night and bat. “Night is over” says the same thing without figurative language

Question 35

Apostrophe

Answer 35

A figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present.
“Milton! Thou shouldest be living in this hour;
England half need of the…”
-William Wordsworth

Question 36

Alliteration

Answer 36

The repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginning of words. “Neville never knew pneumonia”

Question 37

diction

Answer 37

The use of words in a literary work. Diction may be described as formal (the level of usage common and serious books and formal discourse), informal (the level of usage found in the relaxed but polite conversation of cultivated people), colloquial (the everyday usage of a group, possibly including terms and constructions accepted in that group but not universally acceptable), or slang (a group of newly coined words which are not acceptable for formal usage as yet).

Question 38

Metaphor

Answer 38

A figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a competitive term(“like,” “as,” or “than”). A simile would say, “ night is like a black bat,” a metaphor would say, “the black bat night”

Question 39

Onomatopoeia

Answer 39

The use of words whose sound suggests their meaning. Examples are “buzz,” “hiss,” or “creak.”